The Nutcracker

Last night was Nutcracker night! I had my £8 partial view bench seat tickets to see the Royal Ballet before at the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden. A good deal really.

For the pre-show meal, the concept of grab a quick sandwich had transformed into pizza, which then became a specific destination. Alas upon arrival they were full and with limited time before the show there wasn't much we could do! Luckily, about a block away I had spied a newly opened second branch of a restaurant I had really been wanting to go to that was located in Chelsea. The phonetically named Wahaca is seemingly making waves in London by bringing the people the concept of fresh 'market' style Mexican. They had good guac. I got a chicken burrito with some black beans on the side. Good stuff! We had gotten seated right away (arriving just after 6), but by the time we left at 7 there was a line up the stairs and to the door of people waiting for tables. I had grabbed a match book because I had managed to soak my only other matches in water, only to discover that the matchbooks contained seeds to grow your own jalapeno plant. Not so useful!!

The Opera House is located right in Covent Garden and has been recently fixed up. There's a lot of lobby space and a lot of different levels. Mark and I felt a bit of the people when we walked into the first open area and everyone was drinking champagne from the central champagne bar. Mark had some of the free ice water. I bought a program. Things got progressively less fancy the higher you got. I couldn't help but wonder how much some people paid for their tickets! Our seats were some lovely red velvet benches, quite frankly a little better than I expected for £8. The whole place was pretty much covered in red velvet, including the massive curtains with the 'EIIR' symbols on both of them and a giant royal crest at the top. The official patron of the Royal Ballet is listed as 'HM Queen Elizabeth'. Bizarre I tell you, bizarre.

The ballet itself was very good. It was a slightly different interpretation of the story than I'm used to, but of course all adaptations have their differences. The staging and performances were good. At the interval everyone ate ice cream, and at the end there were like a million and a half rounds of applause because people kept coming out and bowing! It got to be a bit ridiculous, really. Anyways, I thought it was very good and fine festive fun. Mark survived his first ballet and not only lived to tell about it, seemed to derive at least some enjoyment out of the affair. So that was cool as well!

The only downside was that it was really really cold when we left! I was slipping a bit crossing the street this morning on frozen road condensation. Such is life adjacent to the north pole!